valid usernames

[Charles Farinella]

Hi,

We are no longer able to create usernames that contain '.', as in
charlie.farinella.  I used to do this, but somewhere along the way that
became a no-no on both RedHat and Slackware.  I'm curious, does anyone
know why?

--charlie

-- 
Charles Farinella 
Appropriate Solutions, Inc. (www.AppropriateSolutions.com)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
603.924.6079

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Why Intuit should have an Open Source version of QuickBooks...

[Hewitt Tech]

The article at the following URL discusses upcoming plans for Microsoft to
add a small business financial application to their Office suite.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/11/05/HNsmboffice_1.html

-Alex


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Re: Why Intuit should have an Open Source version of QuickBooks...

[wei]

> http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/11/05/HNsmboffice_1.html

So why should Intuit have an Open Source version of QuickBooks?
Because Microsoft is doing it?

The subject line could be "Why Microsoft should have an Open
Source version of their `QuickBooks`", if Open Source means
appeal to SMB.

Well, of course, MS wouldn't open their source.

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Re: valid usernames

[wei]

> We are no longer able to create usernames that contain '.', as in
> charlie.farinella.  I used to do this, but somewhere along the way that
> became a no-no on both RedHat and Slackware.  I'm curious, does anyone
> know why?

Did you try to use "useradd"?  It doesn't work.

I think you can manually add such a user.
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Re: Why Intuit should have an Open Source version of QuickBooks...

[Greg Rundlett]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/11/05/HNsmboffice_1.html
   

So why should Intuit have an Open Source version of QuickBooks?
Because Microsoft is doing it?
 

I think he meant that having a GPL'd version would allow the company to 
develop the product feature-set better than the company could do on it's 
own, giving pause to competitors who would need even larger resources to 
compete.  Still, the dual-license business model of a MySQL, AB may not 
be appropriate for a tax and accounting packaged software vendor.  I am 
not familiar with Intuit's revenue model.

-- Greg
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Re: Why Intuit should have an Open Source version of QuickBooks...

[Wei Zhang]

> I think he meant that having a GPL'd version would allow the company to
> develop the product feature-set better than the company could do on it's
> own, giving pause to competitors who would need even larger resources to
> compete.

Thank you for the clarification.  That makes sense.

> Still, the dual-license business model of a MySQL, AB may not
> be appropriate for a tax and accounting packaged software vendor.

Reasons?

I'm totally green on these business models, so please forgive
my ignorance and curiosity.

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Re: Why Intuit should have an Open Source version of QuickBooks...

[Hewitt Tech]

- Original Message - 
From: "Greg Rundlett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Hewitt Tech" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 7:05 PM
Subject: Re: Why Intuit should have an Open Source version of QuickBooks...


> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> >>http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/11/05/HNsmboffice_1.html
> >>
> >>
> >
> >So why should Intuit have an Open Source version of QuickBooks?
> >Because Microsoft is doing it?
> >

The reason I said that is that historically Microsoft has introduced
incompatibilities for third party software and making QuickBooks compatible
with Open Source platforms would not only open up new markets but make them
less dependent on Microsoft behaving themselves.
> >
> I think he meant that having a GPL'd version would allow the company to
> develop the product feature-set better than the company could do on it's
> own, giving pause to competitors who would need even larger resources to
> compete.  Still, the dual-license business model of a MySQL, AB may not
> be appropriate for a tax and accounting packaged software vendor.  I am
> not familiar with Intuit's revenue model.
>
> -- Greg
> _

I wasn't thinking so much that they would GPL their accounting product but
rather that they would deploy it on a Linux network.

QuickBooks is the 800 pound gorilla of the accounting world. Their installed
base of business users is several million. Oddly QuickBooks will happily
work with a Linux fileserver running Samba but Intuit won't support users in
that configuration. I can understand them not wanting to support Linux
proper but it puzzles me why they don't add Linux fileservers as a supported
configuration. They currently require some kind of Windows server, either
peer to peer or domain server for their network.

-Alex


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[OT]Re: Why Intuit should have an Open Source version of QuickBooks...

[Wei Zhang]

> I think he meant that having a GPL'd version ...

Here there are some terms: Open Source, GPL, ...

Open Source: http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php
GPL: listed as one of those open source licenses.

There is a category page at GNU:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html

People tend to be confused about these terms.  When you just
write some little projects, that's probably no big deal; when
you try to start a business, you may need to be careful on the
wording and licenses.

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Re: valid usernames

[Bill McGonigle]

On Nov 10, 2004, at 16:13, Charles Farinella wrote:
We are no longer able to create usernames that contain '.', as in
charlie.farinella.  I used to do this, but somewhere along the way that
became a no-no on both RedHat and Slackware.  I'm curious, does anyone
know why?
I can see where there could be some ambiguity.  For instance, given two 
users:

  charlie
and
  charlie.brown
and the group
  brown
what does
  chown charlie.brown somefile
do?
Now, granted, that's a problem with chown and utilities that accept 
similar syntax, and chown has been changed lately to honor/prefer:

  chown charlie:brown somefile
but until lots of current software and system scripts are updated 
you're going to potentially hit some problems with first.last 
usernames, so the redhat scripts are probably trying to protect you.  
As wei said, there's always vipw.

-Bill

Bill McGonigle, Owner   Work: 603.448.4440
BFC Computing, LLC  Home: 603.448.1668
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   Cell: 603.252.2606
http://www.bfccomputing.com/Text: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
AIM: wpmcgonigleSkype: bill_mcgonigle
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Re: Why Intuit should have an Open Source version of QuickBooks...

[Bill McGonigle]

On Nov 10, 2004, at 19:26, Hewitt Tech wrote:
Oddly QuickBooks will happily
work with a Linux fileserver running Samba but Intuit won't support 
users in
that configuration. I can understand them not wanting to support Linux
proper but it puzzles me why they don't add Linux fileservers as a 
supported
configuration.
Samba doesn't work out-of-the-box with Quickbooks when multiple users 
have the database open.  You have to do something like, IIRC,:

[share]
oplocks = No
level2 oplocks = No
strict locking = Yes
and that means editing system files, and that means explaining vi or 
emacs keybindings to someone on the phone and, well, you can understand 
their position.  It's hard for them to say, "we support Linux servers 
but not if you're clueless," so they just say, "we only support Windows 
servers."  So, people with Linux servers lie and say they've got an NT4 
fileserver if it comes up.

This all implies nasty OS-dependent code in Quickbooks, and who really 
needs hackish open-source Windows code?

I'm using SQL-Ledger myself, but I understand GNUCash is making moves 
in the QuickBooks direction with recent releases.  I'm not particularly 
impressed with SQL-Ledger's ease-of-use.  Anybody here using GNUCash 
for their SMB accounting?

-Bill

Bill McGonigle, Owner   Work: 603.448.4440
BFC Computing, LLC  Home: 603.448.1668
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   Cell: 603.252.2606
http://www.bfccomputing.com/Text: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: valid usernames

[Derek Martin]

On Wed, Nov 10, 2004 at 09:07:52PM -0500, Bill McGonigle wrote:
> Now, granted, that's a problem with chown and utilities that accept 
> similar syntax, and chown has been changed lately to honor/prefer:
> 
>   chown charlie:brown somefile

Hmm?  The Linux chown utilities have accepted both forms as long as I
can remember...  The difference is that one is the historic BSD
behavior, and the other is the historic AT&T behavior.  As for one
being prefered, I don't know what makes you say that.  The only
possible explanation seems to be that the man page sometimes mentions
both ':' and '.', and other times omits the '.' when refering to the
separator.  I don't think this can really be interpreted to indicate a
preference though...  It just seems like an oversight to me, probably
caused by the author of the man page favoring the colon.

> but until lots of current software and system scripts are updated 
> you're going to potentially hit some problems with first.last 
> usernames, so the redhat scripts are probably trying to protect you.  
> As wei said, there's always vipw.

But another question is, why would anyone want to use such long
usernames?  It makes for lots of typing, and generally has no benefit.

One possible answer might be, "We want to use e-mail addresses
of the form first.last at my site."  Well, if that's what you want,
you can (and I think probably should) get it by using a more
reasonable username, and mapping the first.last form in sendmail's
virtusertable, or in the aliases file.  If you're not using sendmail,
your MTA probably has a similar feature, though I wouldn't know what
it is...

So, what do I think makes a reasonable user name?  Well, it should be
short, and obviously it should be unique.  For small sites, the user's
initials usually work quite well.  They're short, and the chances of a
namespace collision are relatively small, compared with schemes that
use the first initial and last name, or vice versa.  It's easy to have
two John Smiths at your office, but chances are their middle initials
will be different...

For larger sites, I've come to like the idea of initials plus a unique
identifier, such as an employee number (or last 4 digits, or phone
extension, etc.).  This is still short, and still avoids namespace
collisions.  If your organization is large enough, eventually you will
start having namespace collisions, if you only use names as the basis
of the user name, no matter what kinds of contortions you use to make
it.

-- 
Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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Re: Why Intuit should have an Open Source version of QuickBooks...

[Thomas M. Albright]

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> > http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/11/05/HNsmboffice_1.html
> 
> So why should Intuit have an Open Source version of QuickBooks?
> Because Microsoft is doing it?
> 
I think he means a Linux version. Closed source would be fine if it ran 
natively. (NOTE: I am a Linux enthusiast, not necessarily a FOSS 
zealot.)

-- 
TARogue (Linux user number 234357)
 If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed,
 given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.
 -Dwight D.  Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969)
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Re: Why Intuit should have an Open Source version of QuickBooks...

[Dan Jenkins]

Bill McGonigle wrote:
Samba doesn't work out-of-the-box with Quickbooks when multiple users
 have the database open.  You have to do something like, IIRC,:
[share] oplocks = No 
level2 oplocks = No 
strict locking = Yes

That may have been true in Samba 2.0.x some time ago.
I had various oplock problems back then with many programs.
I haven't had any in recent years. Even then, I was able to run
QuickBooks multiuser without any problems on a Samba 2.0.x platform.
and that means editing system files, and that means explaining vi or 
emacs keybindings to someone on the phone and, well, you can 
understand their position.  It's hard for them to say, "we support 
Linux servers but not if you're clueless," so they just say, "we only
 support Windows servers."  So, people with Linux servers lie and say
 they've got an NT4 fileserver if it comes up.
I simply said we had a "Windows-compatible server" and Intuit always
accepted that. For about 5 years we were a beta tester for QuickBooks,
we always told them that we were running on a Linux server. They never
added it to their supported platform list. (Well, one year, they had a
tech note saying QuickBooks had been reported to work well under Linux.
The note was removed later.)
One of our contacts for beta testing said that the issue was more that
they (Intuit) received so many support calls which were actually general
computer problems (printer is out of paper, hard drive is full, etc.),
that they simply didn't have the staffing to support those sorts of
questions under another operating system - for which they would have to
train support staff. He said their support staff could handle the basic
questions, but would have to escalate any general Linux questions to a
higher level tech - and they didn't have enough of those to go around as
it stood. Of course, Linux was a bit less mature then and I never
accepted this explanation wholely.
In any event, an open source equivalent to QuickBooks would be very
useful to us. We sometimes write application software which needs some
accounting functionality, or needs to integrate with an accounting
solution. QuickBooks was never easy to interface with. Nor could you
extract the features you wanted, but skip the rest. So far we haven't
found what we want in the open source packages. Though they are
improving.
--
Dan Jenkins ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Rastech Inc., Bedford, NH, USA --- 1-603-206-9951
*** Technical Support for over a Quarter Century
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Re: valid usernames

[Derek Martin]

On Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 11:37:12AM +0900, Derek Martin wrote:
> One possible answer might be, "We want to use e-mail addresses
> of the form first.last at my site."  Well, if that's what you want,
> you can (and I think probably should) get it by using a more
> reasonable username, and mapping the first.last form in sendmail's
> virtusertable, or in the aliases file.  

I meant to also mention that, in general, I don't think this is a good
idea.  It's true that such a scheme makes it easy to guess people's
e-mail addresses, in order to get in touch with them...  But from a
security perspective, I think that's undesireable.  It also causes
problems when namespace collisions occur.

The fact is, no one really cares what your address is, except for
marketing types.  At most, they'll have to type it once, and after
that they just select it from their address book.  As often as not,
they don't need to type it even once, because they can just reply to
an e-mail that you sent, or cut-and-paste it from somewhere else (IM
window, someone else's e-mail, or whatever).  I think most of the
time, no one even notices what your address is, and if they do, they
usually forget it immediately.

Marketing types tend to see this as an issue, because they think it
makes their site seem more professional, or easier to reach, or some
other such nonsense.  But it's just another cartload of pig manure
that typically comes from such organizations...  =8^)

-- 
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Re: valid usernames

[Michael ODonnell]

 [ Apologoies to GNHLUG readers for this but I can't contact Derek directly ]

Hey, Derek -

I'm getting two copies of each of your msgs because
you're sending one to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and one to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - would you consider
sending to just one or the other, please?

Thanks.
 
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Re: valid usernames

[Bill McGonigle]

On Nov 10, 2004, at 21:37, Derek Martin wrote:
As for one
being prefered, I don't know what makes you say that.  The only
possible explanation seems to be that the man page sometimes mentions
both ':' and '.', and other times omits the '.' when refering to the
separator.
Apparently I was thinking of BSD - e.g.
http://resin.csoft.net/cgi-bin/man.cgi?section=2&topic=chown
"STANDARDS
 Previous versions of the chown utility used the dot (`.') 
character to
 distinguish the group name.  This has been changed to be a colon 
(`:')
 character so that user and group names may contain the dot 
character."

Whether or not using first.last for usernames is a good idea, using the 
dotted form of chown in scripts can still present ambiguity problems 
since a dot is valid in usernames and a colon is not.  So it should 
therefore be avoided, hence non-preferred.

-Bill

Bill McGonigle, Owner   Work: 603.448.4440
BFC Computing, LLC  Home: 603.448.1668
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   Cell: 603.252.2606
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Re: valid usernames

[Derek Martin]

On Wed, Nov 10, 2004 at 10:16:27PM -0500, Michael ODonnell wrote:
> Hey, Derek -
> 
> I'm getting two copies of each of your msgs because
> you're sending one to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and one to
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] - would you consider
> sending to just one or the other, please?

Sorry to you and to the list...  My client was just honoring the
headers in the messages to which I was replying.  The list management
software includes a List-Post: 
header in each message, which my mail client finds and includes on
list replies.  Some people also send messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(because IIRC that was what Bruce said to use when he initially
migrated to Mailman), and so my mailer also picks that up and includes
it.

I'll try to watch out for that in the future, but to be honest, I
probably won't notice much more often than I will.  It would be nice
if there were one correct address for posting to the list, that
everyone used, and then this wouldn't be an issue.

-- 
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